


Eve

by TheMarkOfEyghon



Series: BtVS: One Shots [6]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Willow's relationship with magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26944678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMarkOfEyghon/pseuds/TheMarkOfEyghon
Summary: All that was left was the magics that soaked into her very blood when she pressed her palms against the texts laid out in front of her. She didn’t just absorb these words, she CONSUMED them. She bit into the magic where it was blushing and ripe, let the juice drip down her chin like the blood she’d very soon spill.*Willow's relationship with magic as examined through a forbidden fruit analogy.
Relationships: Daniel "Oz" Osbourne/Willow Rosenberg, Willow Rosenberg / Tara Maclay
Series: BtVS: One Shots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1318334
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5





	Eve

“Why did Eve eat the fruit?” six-year-old Willow Rosenberg asked her father one evening. 

“Because she didn’t know better,” he responded, without looking up at her.

* * *

After everything they’d seen and all that they had accomplished fighting against the shadows cast by moonlight in the darkness of a cemetery, it seemed funny to Willow that death would come sauntering forward wearing the face of a trusted friend. Angel(us?) had fallen and was damn determined to take everything with him.

The light in Buffy’s eyes? Stolen. 

The rhythm of her sweet little fishies tails? Gone. 

The beat in Ms. Calendar’s heart? Silenced.

The comfort that Giles once radiated? Finished. 

Angel had dug his fingers into the bodies of all of them and ripped out whatever he could curl them around, holding bloody fists up in triumph and there wasn’t a damn thing that anyone of them could do about it. That was the last thought to go through Willow’s head before her vision gave away to a bright-red burst of agony that tipped her straight into oblivion. 

(Is that what dying is? Feeling everything all at once and then nothing at all, ever again?)

But there was something after the nothing. 

Steady beeping of a heart monitor. 

Pressure on her hand where Xander’s fingers were curled around her palm. 

And her boyfriend standing in the doorway, looking more lost and afraid than she could have ever dreamed to see him.

Angel(us?) had taken so much already, she realized, as she croaked out Oz’s name and bid him to come closer to her. She couldn’t let him take anything else from them. Not her life, not Buffy’s future, not the whole world and everyone else who lived in it. 

Magic was at her fingertips. 

Dark magic, sure, because it was a curse — but magic all the same. She’d felt it starting to burn inside of her before they’d been interrupted and she could feel that lingering spark still inside of her, waiting for her to give it something to ignite. A quiet call that she can’t ignore. 

That she shouldn’t ignore. 

This was saving the day. Nothing that no one else in her position wouldn’t do. 

And when that spark lapped up the incantation with a greedy tongue and devoured it into an explosion of fireworks in front of her eyes, filling up every empty part of her that she had never known existed? She was just being a hero. 

The fact that it tasted so sweet was just a bonus.

* * *

“But why would anyone want to let go of paradise?” Willow asks, moving closer to her father like it would make him notice her.

“I guess they didn’t realize it would be cold,” he answers, impatiently. 

* * *

If the first rush of power that she ever felt from a spell was heaven, then every one that followed after was a step further down the staircase, carrying her away from the greatest sense of peace and satisfaction that she had ever known. Maybe it was because the spells never counted as much as they did in the moment when she gave Angel back his soul, but each one fell just short of great. Each one tasted sour like failure. 

Levitating a pencil didn’t move her the way that the first incantation did.

Accidentally bringing her twisted twin from a hellish dimension had been more fearful than fantastic.

Trying to will-be-done was a work-in-progress. 

But then? There was Tara.

Tara wasn’t anything like her. She learned magic in whispers from her mother just as soon as she’d started breathing. She didn’t just know what power felt like, but the philosophy behind ever spell. The ethics and the morality of changing the very fabric of the world around them to their own liking. 

She was a teacher like Willow could have never dreamed to have. Soft-spoken and warm. Her touch elicited electric shocks through Willow that were like a memory of the perfect euphoria that magic had given her, not a bitter mockery like the spells she had tried on her own. It made her better. 

It made her stronger. 

Finding a new religion in this feeling was the next step, of course. But…

But if she was honest with herself, she was never worshiping the gods and goddesses that Tara told her stories about in the wee hours of the morning. She didn’t care about Hecate or Circe the same way that Tara did; she didn’t think of them as holy mothers or as guiding lights. 

No, Willow worshiped the feeling inside of herself when a spell went perfectly.

The only guiding light she needed was the spark that still burned inside of her, craving more and more words to feed it.

She found love in the taste of Tara’s lips. 

But she found obsession in the taste of power. 

* * *

“It seems silly to me,” Willow murmurs, stretching up onto her tiptoes to see what her father is reading. “They were even told not to. They should have listened.” 

“And so should you,” her father said, finally looking at her. “Willow, go play.” 

* * *

It’s a long climb up.

And a short fall down. 

Tara’s incapable of understanding. She doesn’t WANT to. And it had made Willow so angry in the moment. Of course, she loved Tara and of course, she adored everything about her. But if she could just fix one or two teeny-tiny things, then… well, why shouldn’t she? Just to make things better. 

A tweak here.

A change there. 

A memory wiped away. A fight disappeared. They can just be happy and in love like they should be, without Tara’s disapproving, sour looks whenever Willow wants to try a bigger, better spell. 

But one little tweak turns into another. 

And then another. 

Tara storms out with angry words lingering in the space behind her. And the fire inside of Willow rages with the unfairness of it all. Did she really not understand why Willow felt the way she did? Could she not remember what it was like to feel powerless and how good it felt to be strong, instead? 

Willow’s scream of frustration shattered glass. And a harshly snapped word of Latin fixed it again. 

And no one complained about that. Broken things needed to be fixed. That’s all she was doing. It was all she’d ever done. Magic started off as a necessity, why would it ever stop being one? 

Amy understands, at least. She’s the only one who does. 

And Rack. Rack gives and gives and Willow is more than happy to take. 

She’s consumed by the flames and she doesn’t care who gets burned along with her. Not until it’s too late.

* * *

“If god was as mean as you, I’d eat the apple too,” she says, to herself, as she creeps out of the room and leaves her father alone. 

Not that anyone cares about her opinions. 

* * *

Darkness.

Destruction. 

Power. 

Pain.

Especially pain. Pain like she’d never felt before, still ringing through every cell in her body from the moment that Tara’s body hit the floor and never rose again. Tara was the only person that she was willing to give up this feeling for — the only person she loved more than the fire that had been lit all those years ago. 

And now that love was gone. 

All that was left was the magics that soaked into her very blood when she pressed her palms against the texts laid out in front of her. She didn’t just absorb these words, she CONSUMED them. She bit into the magic where it was blushing and ripe, let the juice drip down her chin like the blood she’d very soon spill. 

She wasn’t full of fire, anymore. 

She was just burning. Inside and out. 

And she was going to take the entire world with her. 

*

_“A, Lord, this tree is fayre and bryght_   
_Greene and semely in my sighte_   
_The fruite is swete and much of mighte_   
_That goddess it may us make_   
_One apple of it I will eate_   
_To assaye which is the meate;_   
_And my housband I will get_   
_One morsal for to take.”_

_\- From the play of Adam & Eve (14th cent.)_


End file.
